Some background: I've been part of the program(me) since 2003, but took a leave of absence during the second half of the course, which was a residency at Lanternhouse International, working with the masterminds behind Welfare State International.
When I returned this spring, the degree option had ceased to exist (it is currently 'under development' while the university's Department of Drama is restructured). Also, Welfare State officially disbanded in 2006 after 38 years of existence (Lanternhouse International is now run by a collective of artists very much in tune with WSI's original mission). And my previous advisor had left Bristol. As had his wife, who stepped in to run the program in 2005-06 while he was on sabbatical.
So I suppose I could say that this project is an attempt to prove my very existence, at least in academic circles.
Actually, the folks at Bristol (who, ostensibly, heroically crawled out of the smoldering crater of my degree) have been kind enough to let me finish my studies here at home and advise me from afar. (Thank you, Sara Jane.)
My intention with this blog is to create a repository for the documentation of performances and installations around the city of Chicago (undertaken by myself and a small group of like-minded artists; hopefully, later on, this group will expand to include artists in other cities). The inaugural project, Memorial Day II, will take place in June of 2007 (see here).
The performances themselves will be site-specific and tactical (as defined by de Certeau 1988); that is, operating within a given system in order to defy that system--in this case, the regulated narratives of city space. They will be designed to produce ‘a rearticulation of site’ (Pearson and Shanks 2001: 159; see also Turner 2000).
I have been particularly inspired by this type of performative intervention in the urban landscape: Forced Entertainment's precarious overlay of imaginary history onto a guided bus tour; Janet Cardiff's factual/fictional audio narratives; Industry of the Ordinary’s various takes on boundary, claim, and sporting match; Stephanie Brooks' sly refashioning of street signage. These pieces ask us to perpetually reconsider our relationship (physical and emotional) to the cityscape. They call for a heightened awareness of public space; of the body as both reader and writer of an urban text.
I'm also drawn to the works cited above because they couch intention in humor, playfulness, gentle mischief--where the "pleasure of getting around the rules of a constraining space" (de Certeau 1988: 18) is valued above a dour struggle with the dominant order. As Thompson notes in the foreword to The Interventionists, "Nothing can suck the air around it like political art: so many words, so much ideology worn so transparently on the sleeve, so much certainty, and so little of interest to look at" (Thompson and Sholette 2004: 10). Adam Brooks of Industry of the Ordinary echoes this sentiment in textbook:
I think it's dangerous to pigeonhole any work as political, certainly with a large "P". Daniel Buren said that all artwork is in some way political with a small "p". The very act of making a discreet work becomes a politicized action, but I think that really what we're doing is taking information and subject matter that both of us feel is resonant and it needs in some way to be represented and doing just that: re-presenting it. (2005: 34)
Again I look to de Certeau for some definition: in these projects, urban place is re-presented as space. Where place is stable, distinct, governed by the rules and laws of the "proper", space "is composed of intersections of mobile elements" (1988: 117) and can be modified, temporalized, reoriented. It lacks stability. It contains multitudes. It is a palimpsest -- where infinite histories, memories, stories overlap and jostle and collide and resonate. A grey area. None, and all, of the above.
It is in this slippery space that Local Disturbances resides. For the moment, at least. Who knows where it will be tomorrow.
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